


A True Home

by amyfortuna



Category: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Fade to Black, Falling In Love, Home, Kissing, Multi, Polyamory, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-09
Updated: 2018-04-09
Packaged: 2019-04-20 15:50:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14264415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amyfortuna/pseuds/amyfortuna
Summary: Elrond and Celebrían meet and hit it off immediately, but there’s a piece of the puzzle missing until Ereinion Gil-galad arrives.





	A True Home

**Author's Note:**

  * For [peasantswhy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/peasantswhy/gifts).



"How is it that we have not met before?" Celebrían asked, tilting her head. "For surely I would remember meeting you, and I've been to Lindon several times in the last few hundred years. Does Gil-galad hide you away in his closet?" She gave Elrond a quirk of a smile and an arched eyebrow. 

He returned the look with a sudden bark of a laugh, his smile lingering about the corners of his eyes. "Ha! No, my lady. Ereinion often tries to _remove_ me from whatever library or scholar's den I might be found in. Says I need fresh air."

"Well, there is certainly plenty of that in this Valley," she replied, turning her head to look around at the wide slopes of the mountains above them. There was a pine wood not far away on a nearby ridge, and she privately resolved to get Elrond to take her for a walk up there. The air was indeed fresh and clean, despite the multitude of tents surrounding them.

"I only wish there was less mud," he said, catching her eye again. His voice was faintly plaintive, though he continued to smile. "It gets everywhere."

Celebrían could not resist her own laugh, this time. "Mud is a fact of life, my dear Elrond! And even more so, a fact of military campaigns. The inevitable tent city, masses of horses all together in one place, the supply wagons cutting great ruts into the green sod...it's ugly, but there's no help for it." She glanced down to the river running through the heart of the Valley. "Well, there is one solution that comes to mind, but you might not like it." 

"Try me," Elrond said. "In fact, come here." He held out his hand. She regarded it for a moment, then took it in her own. "I see your father and mother have already progressed from blissful reunion to muttered debate, and we'd best be well out of that before it moves on to shouting." 

Celebrían suppressed a wince. "Ah. You've met _them_ before at least." 

He nodded, beginning to walk, and she followed. "I've known Aunt Galadriel -- she's not really my aunt -- since I was a very small child indeed." They were walking toward that ridge and those pine trees she'd spotted earlier. "And I've been able to get to know your father quite well in the last year. "

"All that mud, quite the male bonding experience?" she asked with a grin, and then sobered. "I haven't really had the chance to speak with him yet, so tell me how he is doing. Truly how, not what you think I'd wish to hear." 

They were nearly to the line of trees. Elrond paused, and she turned to look at him, questions in her eyes. 

"He has missed you both deeply," Elrond said. "He also tells me that he misses having a true home, a land he feels a connection with, for the one he loved now lies under the wave." 

"I never saw that land," Celebrían murmured. "So what then is a true home?" 

"I do not think I have ever had one," Elrond replied, "so how would I know?" 

They looked into each other's eyes for a moment then, and time halted. Elrond's eyes were not like those of the Noldor, or the Sindar, or like anyone Celebrían had ever met before. Were they Elven eyes? Mortal eyes? Or most like the eyes of a Maia? In any case, they seemed to pierce her right through, holding her fast in their gaze, and then dropped away, behind the sudden blink of long, thick eyelashes. 

He was still holding her hand. They turned to look back down the long sweep of the Valley from their vantage point on the ridge. "You had a solution for me?" he asked. 

Celebrían caught her breath. "Yes," she said. "Build." She cast an eye across to the steep line of cliffs on the other side of the Valley. "You have stone. The river will provide clay if I'm not mistaken." She gestured behind them to the pine trees. "You have wood. You have workers aplenty, horses, carts. You can make roads, too, and bridges." She glanced across to see how he was taking her suggestion.

His eyes were alight. "Just there," he said, gesturing downward to a spot among the tents, a little higher up than the rest of the Valley. "I could build a house."

"A home," Celebrían said. 

He gave her a teasing, laughing, joyful glance. "A homely house."

* * *

"I call dibs," Celebrían said. They were standing together on the porch of the newly built house which was already being called Imladris, watching Gil-galad's army slowly snake down the hill opposite. At the head was Gil-galad himself, hair shining golden in the sun, a brilliant smile on his face as he saw them the two of them standing there together. 

"On what?" Elrond said.

"Ereinion. I get to hug him first." 

Elrond spluttered. "Wha...you -- you do not!" 

"I'm his cousin!" Celebrían shot back, laughing. 

"Distantly! And I'm his, his...his Herald!" 

They were both laughing outright now, elbows nudging each other. Their servants, standing ready on lower steps to take horses and baggage, were grinning themselves, catching the conversation. 

Ereinion Gil-galad, King of the Noldor in Exile, eyes twinkling, wheat-gold hair gleaming bright, strode up the steps of Imladris, leaving his horse in ready hands, and gathered them both up in his arms. 

"Hello, you two," he said. "I see my favourite cousin and my favourite Herald have met at last." 

"Why didn't you introduce us before?" Elrond demanded as soon as he was set back down. "Celebrían and I get on like a house afire!" 

Celebrían reached out and knocked on the wood pillar of the porch. "That's a terrible simile to use with this house so newly built," she said, grinning. 

Ereinion cuffed Elrond lightly on the side of the head. "You always had your head in a book! I did tell you to get out now and then." He gentled down to stroking Elrond's hair. "But really, I couldn't be better pleased. You've done well in difficult circumstances, and made something beautiful at the same time." 

Elrond blushed. "The house was really Celebrían's suggestion," he said. 

"Then the mistress of the house should show me what she has built," Ereinion said, turning his focus to Celebrían, who unaccountably began blushing herself. 

"That's not...I'm not...," she began, stuttering, then gathered herself. "We're not together like that, we're _friends_ , Ereinion," she said. 

He gave her a slight wink and shrugged. "We'll sort all that out later. But will someone please show me this house?" He took Celebrían's hand in one of his own and Elrond's in the other. "How about both of you show me what you have made together?"

* * *

The fire was warm, and the night cool. Celebrían could hear the singing of the river below the house as she looked out the window toward the rushing waters. 

Singing of another kind wafted up to her as well. Overjoyed at seeing friends and family for the first time in a long time, many of Gil-galad's army and Elrond's people were gathered by the riverbank, raising their voices to the moon and stars. She distinctly heard one voice raised over the others in laughing song, '...to fly would be folly, to stay would be jolly..." before it was drowned again by laughter. 

"What are you doing all the way over there?" Ereinion said, waving his glass at her. "Come here, my dear, and join us." Elrond sat next to him on the sofa, a decorous space between them, and with a sudden perverse thought of glee, she marched over and dropped down in-between them, giving Ereinion a defiant, laughing glance. 

He completely failed to be taken aback at all, but set his glass down on the nearby table, then stretched out, putting an arm over her shoulders. At the same time, she felt another arm slide around her waist, and turned sharply to see Elrond, that wicked creature, laughing as he settled in close, leaning his head on her shoulder. She could feel Ereinion's hand caressing Elrond's hair and turned back again toward Ereinion to find his other hand, now free of a wine glass, curving in to gently touch her cheek. 

"This is something more like it," he said to her. "I missed you both terribly, but the one thing that cheered me up was hearing that you were both well and had finally, finally met."

"If I'd known that such a girl existed," Elrond said, "you might have had an easier time getting me out of the library." 

Ereinion shook his head at Elrond. "It wasn't for lack of trying, believe me." He settled back, visibly relaxing, and Celebrían cuddled in, allowing herself to take pleasure in the nearness and warmth of both of them. Ereinion smelled like tree bark, familiar and dusty, while Elrond was altogether more earthy and primal, tilled soil in sunshine, a smell that went straight to the core of her and left her tingling. 

Indeed, she was tingling, all her senses afire, awoken, as though during all her years knowing Ereinion and all her days knowing Elrond something had been sleeping and had woken up now only in the presence of both of them. Romance with Gil-galad, the High King, might have featured in her adolescent fantasies, but never in her actual interactions with him before. If questioned about it, she would have said something about 'kin too near,' though they were in fact a degree or so away from first cousins, and he had never felt like a close relative. That she loved him was undeniable, a part and fact of her very being, and if physical desire came now to the forefront of her thoughts about him, that was simply a new and delightful aspect of her love. 

And Elrond was something else again. She couldn't deny that he stirred her to the depths, instantly both her dearest friend and wildest fantasy in one. She reached out, taking hold of his hand, which he immediately yielded to her, and held on, suddenly sure of everything that she needed to know. 

"Ereinion," she said softly, and he turned, all attention on her straight away. She put out her other hand and he immediately enfolded it in his larger one. For a little while, she just sat there, enjoying the sensations of having both of them near. 

Ereinion broke the silence. "Look at the pair of you," he said, eyes shining with a misty brightness. "You were clearly made and meant for each other." The words were followed by a hint of a sigh, and Celebrían could not bear it. 

"Who are you, my King, meant for, if not the both of us?" Her voice was a little bit desperate, she realised as she spoke, and next to her, Elrond stirred softly against her shoulder. Ereinion turned to look her in the face, but Elrond was already speaking in her wake. 

"My lord, you surrender us so readily to each other that you have not yet considered that we are not willing to _give you up_." Letting go of her hand, he stood, purpose in his gaze, and Celebrían suddenly knew that he had given this much more thought than she had, before he dived, bird-like, into Ereinion's lap, kneeling over him and pressing a long warm kiss to his inviting lips. 

Ereinion's surprised gasp rang through the room, and he dropped Celebrían's hand in favour of wrapping both arms around Elrond and kissing him back fervently. Celebrían for her part rose from her seat, unsure of what she had unleashed, but before she could say anything or run from the room, Elrond pulled back from Ereinion, gathered her in, and kissed her too. 

Kissing Elrond was like flying, sudden and swift. Her senses all flared up, catching the moment and preserving it in memory like amber. This was what she had wanted him to do every moment since they first met. She blazed against him, meeting his mouth with as much fervour as he gave, her eyes sliding shut with bliss, noting the pair of sea-blue eyes that watched their lips moving against each other. She wondered idly how much of what she tasted in Elrond's mouth was in truth Ereinion. 

When Elrond finally broke away, Celebrían's knees almost gave way, but Ereinion put out a steadying arm and pulled her close. "Little cousin," he murmured, looking at her with delight. 

"You must not call me that anymore," she whispered back, and descended to meet his lips with hers. The taste of his mouth was stronger now, and already she was sorting out the subtle differences between them. Both were desirable, both set her body ablaze, but Elrond was wildfire where Ereinion was hearthfire. She basked in the feel of him, so solid and strong against her, where Elrond was more her own frame and height. 

Elrond was not idle. As Celebrían and Ereinion kissed, he pressed his lips to their temples, carded his fingers through their hair, and rained sweetness upon them in the form of gently encouraging words, until they turned back to him, laughing, and repaid him in full for every caress. 

At last, laughing all the while, Elrond managed to tear himself away from the both of them enough to stand up, and held his hands out, inviting. "Celebrían," he said, "we once spoke of a true home, and now at last I understand it. We stand in Imladris, and long may its walls guard us. But Imladris, though it is a homely house, is not home. You are my home. And you, my Ereinion, you are my home. Surrounded by your love, caught in your embraces, I am where I was always meant to be."

As one, Celebrían and Ereinion rose from the couch, taking Elrond's hands in theirs, and the large bed where they lay until long after the next day's dawn was only a few steps away.

**Author's Note:**

> This story is part of the [LLF Comment Project](https://longlivefeedback.tumblr.com/llfcommentproject), which was created to improve communication between readers and authors. I invite and appreciate feedback, including:
> 
>   * Short comments
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>   * Constructive criticism, as long as it is not that I had written a different story
>   * Pointing out any typos or grammar errors
>   * ”<3” as extra kudos
>   * Reader-reader interaction
> 

> 
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> I am very grateful for all comments, but might not reply due to lack of time; however, if questions are asked, I will endeavour to reply as soon as I can. If you would prefer to give me feedback in private, my contact details are in my [profile](https://archiveofourown.org/users/amyfortuna/profile), as is my blanket permission to create fanworks based on my work. 
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